


Kiss Me With Your Eyes

by mamey2422



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: F/M, post 3x11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24961405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamey2422/pseuds/mamey2422
Summary: Beth finds out that Mick’s comment about Rio taking art class is true. Takes place immediately following the final Brio scene in 3X11.******Rio usually worked from a reference piece or a sketch. But this time he worked quickly, almost frantically, from memory, from vivid moments so firmly settled in his mind that he couldn’t shake them away until he’d exorcised them through the paint. When Rio stepped back a few hours later, he was stunned at what had come out of him. Beth stared back at him.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Comments: 22
Kudos: 289





	Kiss Me With Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Andy Warhol quote.

Rio was distracted and confused when he walked through his front door, absently hanging up his jacket and placing his shoes in their assigned spot in his closet. As often was the case after a meeting with Beth he was amped and edgy.

When Beth texted him to meet at the spa store, he expected a quick confirmation that she had a system in place for washing money. And it was that. But something else was in the air. Something familiar and tempting. The sizzle of success, the sparkle of confidence. It pulsed out of Beth, reverberated into him so that his pride flared up, arousal too.

It was moments like that when Rio felt doors sliding open, inviting them further into each other’s worlds. But that was exactly what he needed to avoid. If he slipped into everything he felt about Beth, allowed himself to feel it all, stopped fighting his attraction to her, he’d be totally lost. If he didn’t pull back fast enough to think, to plan, to remember that she put three bullets in him, he’d make a mistake. Maybe a deadly one.

Restless, Rio started prepping a canvas in the corner of his apartment where he kept an easel and cabinet of paints as a simple makeshift studio, choosing bold, vivid colors, applying them in sweeping strokes.

Few people knew he took art classes. Mick and Marcus and the five other students. Learning new skills, new experiences, were important to him, kept him sharp. He’d started painting a year ago and it hooked him right away. Art quickly became a stress reliever, almost like therapy, and he found himself needing the outlet more and more ever since coming back from the dead.

There was comfort in the feel of the brush in his hand. Small and light versus the cold heaviness of his gun. Like any weapon, he had to be trained and careful with how he used his brushes. But the power came from bringing something to life instead of ending it.

Rio preferred painting with oils. He liked the flexibility and depth it offered. How it could be applied from a brush or palette knife or even his fingers. He could dilute it for a thin glaze or keep it dense and thick. It dried slowly so he could keep working with the paint until it was precisely what he wanted. His teacher said the quest for perfection in art was unachievable, but Rio struggled to learn that lesson.

Art forced Rio to look at something from different angles. Light and shadow changing the perception of how things existed in the world. Like Beth. On the surface, in the regular light of day, she was a happy soccer mom. But underneath that veneer, hiding in the recesses of her soul, was Elizabeth. Strong and smart and deceitful and persistent. And somehow she’d gone from employee to lover to enemy to whatever foggy term defined their relationship now.

Rio usually worked from a reference piece or a sketch. But this time he worked quickly, almost frantically, from memory, from vivid moments so firmly settled in his mind that he couldn’t shake them away until he’d exorcised them through the paint. When Rio stepped back a few hours later, he was stunned at what had come out of him.

Beth stared back at him. He’d painted her eyes big and blue. The sparkling determination he’d become so familiar with shone through even in one dimension. Her mouth was pink and full and soft and faintly curved as if fighting a proud smile. A defiant tilt of her head, her blonde hair wavy but neat, one piece inching over her face. He imagined pushing it back with a finger, remembered the smoothness of her skin against his touch.

The background was an indistinct mix of colors, but Rio could place her in any number of settings where he’d seen that look. The look that made him want to give her everything. At her kitchen or the park or his warehouse or her bedroom.

Sexual tension, reluctant intimacy, brutal violence all mixed together whenever they were together and it funneled into his painting as if it were a living thing looking back at him. Color and shapes and textures turned into brooding shadows and joyful brightness.

Rio tossed his brush onto the easel in frustration, rubbed his hands over his face. How had he let this happen? How did he get so mixed up in Beth? Let her get inside him this way? He resented that the couldn’t understand her, forget about her. He tried to convince himself that she didn’t matter to him. But he knew that was a lie. When does it end?, Beth once asked him. Rio was wondering the same thing.

****************

Beth was annoyed as she knocked on Rio’s apartment door. Annoyance was becoming a common sensation when it came to him. She was annoyed that he was taking a cut of her spa business when she was the one who got everything up and running. Annoyed that she was curious about what his new apartment looked like. That Fitzpatrick was still being evasive. Annoyed that small streaks of attraction still flared through her whenever she was near him despite her repeated assertions that she hated him.

But he insisted on meeting at his apartment. Mick was on vacation and apparently Rio was too busy to make all the usual pick ups. Fine. If that’s what it took to rebuild trust, to get one day closer to being out from under his thumb, she’d gladly do it.

He answered the door and for a moment they stood staring at each other, his intense focus on her making her squirm, shift on her feet. Even though his attention was exactly what she wanted when she’d picked out her keyhole shirt especially with him in mind.

He was wearing his usual black t-shirt with black jeans, but his normal expression of cocky amusement was replaced by something tired, some unusual mood in his eyes.

“Your cut,” Beth finally said, holding three boxes out to him, clearing her throat as she forced her voice into perkiness.

“Your bag is over here,” Rio nodded behind him taking the boxes from Beth, placing them on the counter.

Even as she told herself she didn’t care, curiosity pushed Beth through the doorway, following him into his apartment. It was large and spacious, filled with light. Neat and organized. She recognized some furniture and decorations from her break in of his last place, but a lot of it was new. The scents were immediately foreign and familiar. That clean male combination she always associated with him, mixed with something that smelled like turpentine and paint.

“What is that?”

Realization at what Beth was asking about with shock in her voice dawned on Rio without having to see what she was pointing at. He’d been too exhausted to put a tarp over his easel the night before, immediately crawling into bed the moment the painting was done, the effort of it suddenly draining him. Then his morning had been so busy he’d forgotten.

Rio slowly turned toward Beth, hiding his embarrassment behind a stoic expression, stiff shoulders. He was confident, sometimes arrogant, about most things in his life - his work, his business, his parenting. He knew what he wanted, and how to get there. It was a rare thing for him to feel insecure. But when it came to his art he sometimes did. There was no black and white in art in the same way there was in his work. Good employee versus bad. More money versus less. On time versus late. It was all very straightforward. His art, though, was about feelings, creating something with his heart instead of his mind, so personal, so intimate. And he never imagined Beth seeing any of it, especially a portrait of herself.

“What does it look like?” Rio deflected, answering with a question, only willing to reveal what he absolutely needed to.

Beth stepped closer, slowly crossing the room until she was standing in front of the canvas. Her heart flipped, her throat tightened.

“You...painted me.”

Rio stood next to Beth, watching her look at the painting. Words didn’t matter in art. That’s another thing Rio liked about it. Doing what he did for a living for as long as he had, he’d learned to censor what he said. And, over time, his feelings cut off too. Art allowed him to fully inhabit an experience or sensation or emotion without having to speak. Could Beth see it? See everything he could never tell her?

Beth took inventory of all the features that looked just like her. But the woman in the painting was full of power and confidence and pleasure.

“I’m not like that. That’s not me.”

Beth wondered if she’d ever look at herself and see all that Rio saw. He’d pulled out all these new parts of her from deep inside her, parts that were raw and dangerous and uncomfortable. All the parts she was growing to love about herself, the parts that Dean didn’t want.

Sometimes Beth wished she had a time machine. She would go back to the night they robbed the Fine ‘N Frugal and stop them from going in. But what she really wanted was to go back to the day she met Dean and decline his invitation to prom. To allow all the shades of her to surface instead of stomping them down to be who everyone else needed her to be.

“That’s how I see you.” Rio touched her cheek, pushing her hair away from her face.

Neither of them were the same people they were before they met. Beth could look at Rio, at the version of herself in his painting, and see that. Her pulse slowed, thickened, a shimmering warmth settled into the center of her chest. She wanted to touch him back, to get closer.

But she didn’t. She turned and walked away, panicking at how much Rio actually mattered to her. She was almost at the door when Rio said her name, her full name, stopping her in her tracks. She didn’t turn around. He was too confusing. She had a plan in place that was simple and sensible. But when he looked at her in that way he did she forgot all about it. She opened the door and walked away.


End file.
